Brands Saved Almost $10 For Each Incremental Store Visit in 2018 Vs. 2017

New York, NY (April 24, 2019) – Brands spent an average of $13.71 to drive each incremental store visit in 2018 – approximately ten dollars less than $23.05 spent, on average, in 2017 – according to the third annual study of footfall attribution benchmarks released today by leading location intelligence and consumer insights company, Cuebiq.

First launched in 2017, the annual Cuebiq report offers year-to-year comparisons on metrics that are designed to provide marketers with benchmarks to gauge how their advertising campaigns are performing in driving offline activities. The report shares how various marketing channels affect store visits, and allows advertisers to compare their campaign performance against industry averages and make better informed strategic planning decisions. The key marketing metrics used to generate industry averages are obtained through mobile location data and include: Brand Uplift (footfall increase from ad exposures driving visits to store), Visit Rate, Cost Per Incremental Visit (CPIV) and Dwell Time.

“This year, we expanded our report to include additional industry categories such as Alcohol/Beverages, Apparel/Fashion, Beauty, Fine Dining, Home Furniture, Jewelry Stores and Tourism, as well as out-of-home (OOH) benchmarks and year-on-year comparisons, to provide a more accurate picture of footfall attribution than ever before,” said Valentina Marastoni-Bieser, EVP Marketing of Cuebiq. “As a result, marketers can see how their brand stacks up against category averages, and their competitors, over time, and use this data to better inform their marketing decision-making.”

When looking at CPIV, by category, in 2018, the Automotive industry had the highest spend at $291.02, followed by Home Furniture, $114.86, and Grocery Stores, $76.75, indicating that a higher investment is typically needed to drive consumers to visit these stores. Automotive also had the biggest increase year-to-year from $36.64 to $291.02, followed by Grocery Stores from $22.14 to $76.75, indicating that consumer purchasing behavior is changing rapidly.

While last year’s study reported that, on average, the success bar was higher for in-app advertising, this year it is OOH (out-of-home) compared to all other platforms. The report shows uplift in footfall traffic by platform, and the OOH channel benchmarks were introduced for the first time in this year’s study. The data shows that OOH advertising contributed the most to driving an average footfall traffic uplift of 80-120%.

This is likely due to the fact that OOH is ubiquitous, unskippable and often appears closest to the point of sale. Additionally, OOH is benefiting from advanced technology, which now delivers more granular data from a range of sources. Mobile-only ranked second in uplift at 10-89%, followed by cross-device (web and mobile) at 6-39%.

Additional insights from the report include:

The new category Alcohol/Beverages ranked No. 1 among all categories in visit rate in 2018 with 14.58%, followed by new categories Beauty at 13.56%, and Convenience Stores at 7.24%. Visit rate is the percentage of consumers exposed to the campaign that visited the store out of all exposed consumers. Alcohol/Beverages showed the lowest benchmark of all categories with a range of 10%, which indicates that a brand either has a better chance to outperform the average or that the bar for success is low for the category. Gas Stations (2.82% to 5.64%) and Pharmacies 3.13% to 4.60%) showed the greatest gains in visit rate.

When analyzing uplift by quarter, Q4 2018 had the highest median uplift for the year, with 60%, compared to Q3 2018 at 33%. However, the Q4 2018 also had the lowest overall average visit rate for the entire year, indicating continued online purchasing during the holiday season, which is consistent with Q4 2017. In Q2 2018, there was a precipitous drop in uplift year to year, due to greater vacancy rates and store closures.

Four categories saw significant changes in prime-time windows for visits year-to-year, with a shift to earlier in the day from last year: Big Box retailers saw a shift to 1-2pm from 5-6pm. Home improvement stores shifted to 12-1pm from 6-7pm, pet stores to 3-4pm from 6-7pm and Telco stores to 12-1pm from 6-7pm. These changes reveal new shopping patterns such as consumers rushing to a Telco store in the middle of the day to fix a phone, or to a Big Box or Home Improvement store to pick up household items. Notably, Casual Dining, which last year concentrated at the 7–8 p.m. dinner hour, now has two predominant times of visit – 12–1 p.m. and 6–7 p.m. – indicating that more people are also dining out for lunch.

The report also provides footfall attribution case studies across media channels, including digital for a leading convenience store, casual dining restaurant, home furniture, apparel, CPG and auto brand; OOH for QSR and fitness brands, and TV for QSR brands across advanced and linear TV.

Following a privacy-compliant framework, Cuebiq only collects anonymous and aggregated data from users that explicitly opt-in. At the forefront of industry privacy standards, Cuebiq is one of the very first location providers certified by the NAI, the leading privacy association in the United States. Cuebiq is also certified by TrustArc and TAG, and Privacy Shield registered.

Cuebiq is a leading consumer insights and measurement company, providing brands and marketers a trusted, high quality, and transparent currency for offline visitation data to map and measure the consumer journey. Cuebiq is at the forefront of industry privacy standards, follows a privacy compliant framework in its data collection, and is one of the very first location providers certified by leading privacy association, NAI.

With a reach of 1 in 3 U.S. smartphone users, Cuebiq gives brands and marketers access to the largest database of anonymous and accurate location data in the United States. Its AI-driven platform, Clara, offers analytics, audience, and cross-channel and TV attribution capabilities, that empower brands and marketers to make better, more-informed business decisions and marketing strategies. Prioritizing the use of data to make the world a better place, Cuebiq’s Data for Good program encourages top universities and nonprofit organizations across the globe to leverage Cuebiq’s location insights to drive innovation in community causes such as: disaster relief, income inequality and urban development.